Despite their different cultural backgrounds and social conditions, the souls of Shah Latif Bhitai and Wordsworth seem to be similarly united by a beauty that conquers all

SHAH Abdul Latif Bhitai a great poet gave new meaning to love and depth to feelings. His poetry encompasses the whole of life, from its small segment of the earth to the endless mysterious heaven .His experience of things are powerfully intense. Wordsworth seems to be the only poet who like Shah Bhitai offered novelty in his way of perception.

Wordsworth’s could empathise with objects. “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling,” he declares that “takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.” In this process reminiscence, meditation, imagination and various emotions are involved. These require depth and the light of wisdom.Wordsworth in this way achieved the ability to become united with natural objects. He says,


O’soul of nature: excellent and fair
That rejoice with me, with whom I too


His poems Tintern Abbey, The Solitary Reaper, Resolution and Independence, Prelude, and the Daffodils were composed through the process of emotion recollected in tranquility. Nature was the source of inspiration for his purest thought, uplifting his soul, strengthening his mind endowing his spirit with sublimity.

On the other hand Shah Bhitai with his imagination, knowledge, exprience from travels, his grip on human psychology and love of nature created immortal poetry beyond time and space. He loved nature with its various vibrant colors, its dazzling scenes and sacred and calm moods. His poetry is wrapped in the celestial light of nature.The beauty of the Beloved is personified in nature’s serene beauty. He didnot place restrictions on his pen as Wordsworth did in his choice of expressions. His poems have a universal message. In Wordsworth’s poetry, love of nature leads him to love of man, while in Shah Bhitai’s poems he discovers nature within his soul.

As Wordsworth says, nature is a nurse, a guide like a mother’s lap.


One impulse from vernal wood may teach you more of man,
Of moral, evil and of good, than all the sages can” he proclaims


Shah Bhitai similarly advises man to learn from nature. Because in nature are various laws and rules.

Shah says,


They move in flock, untied in the bond of inviolable love,
Behold! Birds have more affection than men!


Nature always purifies the human mind and soul; it has immense influence to sooth the troubled mind. Shah Bhitai’s description of nature is unique with various levels of manifestations. Wordsworth defines the nature’s beauty but is unable to portray human love. In a few of his poems we trace human passions but the depth, fervor and intensity is lacking. Wordsworth compares the loveliness of the Beloved beautifully:


Her eyes as stars of twilight fair;
Like twilight’s, too, her dusky hair;
But all things else about her drawn
From may-time and the cheerful dawn.


Yet no intensity of burning desire exists in Wordsworth’s poems of an aching soul with pangs of agony.

The essence of Shah Bhitai’s poetry is love, longing and separation. Even a small flower and black bee are the incarnation of love .

Love is a force which is deep like the oceans, firm like the mountains. Love bequeaths an eternal light to blind souls. Love makes the flowers bloom. It is love that exhilarates human life, explains the unsolved mysteries of the heart, invigorates the mind to discover the infinite treasures of feelings. This love is defined delightfully through nature:


When the beloved lifted with grace his intoxicated eyes;
The sun’s rays became dim and the moon lost her lustre;
The Pleiades and planets bowed in submission to him;
The beloved’s beauty rendered dim the lustre of gems


Shah Bhitai became unified through love with the universe. His intense soul like soaked soil comes to life. Love turns barren human souls into evergreen plants. For Shah Bhitai love harmonizes the universe. True love is insatiable, its flame is never extinguished; it has the thirst of the oceans.

He utters:


O beloved! Give me a drought of thirst so that I may quench thirst


With thirst
Through physical love Shah Bhitai travels to the spiritual world, from the finite to the infinite. In the same way that Wordsworth perceives God through nature his voyage begins from the earth [in the form of nature] to the heavenly light. That is his pantheism. The beauty around him intoxicates his soul leading to revelation and sublime thoughts. His mystic conception is evident in the “Ode: intimation of immortality from recollection from early childhood.”

In this poem he reveals:


Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The soul that rises with us, our life’ star,
Hath had elsewhere it’s setting,
And cometh from afar
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home


Shah Bhitai’s mystic philosophy is based on selfless love, devotion and limitless quest. Where there is no concept of “I”, it has to merge into “thyself” a state of complete unification. A highly ecstatic experience beyond the limits of time and space. He rejoices:


O aspirant! Your ego is a veil between thee and the beloved;
Lo! The veil vanishes and then all doubts melt into nothing


In the boundless search for the absolute, one blink can reveal the truth which a thousands years couldn’t reveal. An unexpected miracle of a moment can conquer the whole universe. A secret within a secret. In Shah Latif Bhitai’s poetry, self-realization leads to the discovery of hidden truths.

Shah Latif fell in love with the daughter of Mirza Moghal Beg. This love was the first step to the restless world of the Sanyasis.

Shah Latif is called the poet of common people. He was well-versed in the folk wisdom of Sindh. He roamed from one place to another enriching his knowledge. He visited different places such as Lakhpat, Lahut, Thar, Jessalmir, Haro, Lamakan, Ganja, Haro, Kabul, and Hinglaj. His observations and study of human nature give his poetry universality. He talks of common people, their problems, dreams and desires. His female characters are fascinating, for women are shown, besides their emotional weaknesses, as creators who create life. Enriched with motherly love they are Sufis with selfless love for their child. Shah Bhitai’s depiction of the common are touchingly warm, compassionate and enlightened.

Wordsworth used simple language to talk about common people and their simple lives and dreams. He wrote the Lyrical Ballads to illustrate the beauty of rustic life, revolting against the artificial style of the eighteenth century.

The Solitary Reaper, Lucy Gray, Michael, The Education of nature are great examples of simplicity of language. The simple joys of life are revealed in the fragrance of flowers, in the colours of a rainbow, in the twinkle of stars, surging in the silver waves.

The pictorial qualities of both poets is superb. Despite their different cultural backgrounds and social conditions their souls seem to be similarly united by a beauty that conquers souls.

Wordsworth was born at Cockermouth, a place of superb natural beauty. As a boy, in the countryside, nature was his best companion. He discovered hidden truths in natural beauty. In the Lyrical Balleds he expressed his early childhood impressions of nature. Nature was a living being, possessed of a soul. He spent the last fifty years of his life at Dove cottage Grasmere and then at Rydal Mount.

His depiction of nature is like a wonderful painting with solitary hills in silver wreaths of curling mists.

Shah Bhitai too lived in a place of natural beauty. He resided at Bhit [Sandune], called Bhitai. Near it flowed the Karar Dhand [lake] and in its lap the lotus bloomed which was a source of joy for him.

The daffodils and the Lotus, the Grasmere and Bhit Shah are different but the immortal feelings and visionary gleam reflected in their poems is the same.

Shah Bhitai like a painter not only depicts outer beauty but also, more appealingly, inner passions and feelings. In Sur Sarang he portrays the fine colors of a rainy season, a cloudy sky, the sweet-scented breeze, happy faces, sparkling eyes and joyful birds. A musician himself who played the Tanbooro we find rhythm in his poetry, the same rhythm that prevades the universe.

Both poets are united in the fact that their souls overflow with love and symphony of nature!